Customer Spotlight

San Jose, CA

Headquarters

Electrical Contractor

Trade

700+

Employees

Sprig Electric is a Silicon Valley-based electrical contractor specializing in design-build services for electrical, low voltage, controls, fire & life safety and energy solution systems. Sprig was founded in 1970 with a commitment
to exceed expectations in customer satisfaction, craftsmanship and safety. Ranked 25th in the U.S. by EC&M for 2017, Sprig continuously provides their customers with a partnership that brings value and success to all stakeholders. For more information on how Sprig can service you, visit www.sprigelectric.com.

Miranda O'Brien

Started with Sprig Electric in 2013 as the Receptionist and is now the Manager of Field Administration.

ROBERT VALDERRAMA

Sprig Electric’s Chief Project Delivery Officer by day and a high school football coach by night.

NICOLE ROLLEY

Has worked for Sprig Electric as a Field Administrator for two years and loves traveling the world in her spare time.

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User Rating

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VALUE (COST vs BENEFIT)

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EASE OF USE

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Support

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ONBOARDING & TRAINING

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RELIABILITY

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ROI

LaborChart Listens

“LaborChart always sends us emails the day before or the day of a new release— we get video tutorials, bullet points, screenshots, so we’re always pretty aware of what’s going on. We also get product roadmaps to see what’s coming longer-term.

LaborChart really shines in this area: You listen to what customers want and create new features that are not only easy to use, but actually relevant to our needs.”
– Nicole Rolley

IN-Depth

What did you use before LaborChart?

Robert: Pen, paper, and magnets. We had big magnet boards in both the shop and on job sites, sometimes with as many as 700 people being managed. We also used another software product to track safety information, but we had grown too big for it—it just wasn’t working for us anymore. We used Access for payroll distribution sheets and the active employee roster.

What was your biggest concern when evaluating a switch to LaborChart?

Nicole: Change is scary! We were taking a manual process and making it electronic and that makes people nervous, especially the superintendents.

Robert: My biggest concern was if you’d be willing to take our feedback to help in influence the product’s development—which you have. Taking our input was a really, really big deal. You listen to what customers want and create new features that are not only easy to use, but actually relevant to our needs. Having worked with other companies in the industry, I can say you usually don’t find that level of attention and cooperation.

Miranda: Agreed, other vendors almost seem offended that you’re asking for something different than what’s in their current release.

Robert: Sometimes software developers say they want to hear feedback from users, but they’ve invested so much time in it that they don’t really want any criticism. They say, “Use it this way!” But they’ve never actually done what we do every day, and don’t understand our day-to-day challenges and issues. They’re stuck in their own vision of what the product should be. That’s where LaborChart stands out: You really do understand the industry, and clearly work to keep learning from customers like us..

Were there any growing pains after deploying LaborChart?

Robert: Yes, but any growing pains we had were not due to the product—it was about people, and what they’re used to. Changing what people are used to is a challenge.

Miranda: We worked with superintendents to get their buy-in. We met with them separately, and preloaded their job data, and showed them how it would be easier, how there’d be fewer mistakes. We told them how they could avoid driving in just to see the man board, and no longer have to call us and say, “Can you move so-and-so?” or “Can you send me a picture of the board?”

Nicole: And hearing our enthusiasm was one thing, but they really had to discover the benefits for themselves. I think the tipping point came when superintendents realized they didn’t have to come in every Tuesday and manually update the man board anymore—They could do it from home, or their job site. That’s when they realized we were telling the truth about how powerful it is.

What’s the essence of LaborChart’s value at Sprig?

Robert: For me, it’s the labor savings. It gave our superintendents and our admins the capacity to take on other work. It gave our superintendents two or more hours a week to focus on job sites—That’s the huge X-factor here. If they have two more hours a week to watch jobs and identify issues in the field, rather than dealing with wasteful administrative tasks, that equals a lot of money in the long run.

And we keep discovering features that didn’t even figure into our original ROI calculations. There are things on the surface of LaborChart that we knew are going to change this or that about how we work, but we’ve found a ton of other things like saving time on assignment alerts that go far beyond what we’d originally quantified.

Miranda: I’d summarize it as “Everything is in one place.” There’s personal information, there’s vacation, there’s notes, so superintendents can keep track of what they see about worker performance for future reference. I also love the running log which shows us who changed what, when . . . It’s just a one-stop shop for workforce management.

Have you looked at ROI or savings since implementing LaborChart?

Robert:
We actually did a value-stream analysis mapping our costs before and after, starting from the moment we get a new hire. We looked at every variable, including the cost of a superintendent. We looked at the cost of training, the supplies they used, additional admin time, the way superintendents would create their own spreadsheets for workers out in the field, the extra mileage and time they spent manually updating or taking pictures of the board, the calls they would make to request changes, the check distribution lists, and much more.

When we compare the “before” and “after,” LaborChart is a no- brainer.

Sprig's Favorite Features

Manpower Reports

“The Manpower Reports. Having reports for separate jobs on separate pages changed our lives–an improvement you made in direct response to our request! It’s the smallest thing, but it saves us hours every week.”– Miranda

Assignment Alerts

“I like the assignment alerts which notify the foremen when apprentices are going to school and when we have apprentice rotations. It saves time, because we used to make calendar notifications and send an email for each apprentice.”– Nicole

Integrations

“LaborChart’s ability to integrate with Spectrum is a major plus for us. It helps ensure accuracy of all the data and avoids the need for duplicate entry.”– Robert